Making Rent With Bitcoins and Rentalutions

Rentalutions, a Chicago based company is bringing the relationship between landlords and tenants into the digital age.

Established April of 2012 in Chicago by Ryan Coon, Laurence Jankelow, and Dylan Lingelbach, Rentalutions aims to streamline the traditionally old school rent payment process.

Both Ryan and Laurence were surprised by the archaic leasing and payment processes, which involved numerous faxes and relying on snail-mail

The service, which ranges from $5 to $150 a month, allows landlords to view credit reports and background checks, collect rent online, and to create and sign leases. As for tenants, they are able to make online rent payments and request maintenance services.

The twist? Rentalutions is the first of its kind to enable tenants to pay their rent in bitcoins.

Rentalutions currently does not process these bitcoins themselves. They instead need an email request from the tenant of their rent’s dollar amount. Then the tenant receives an invoice from Coinbase. The funds are transferred directly into the landlord’s account, or they are mailed a check if they are not subscribers to the service.

The fee for bitcoin payments is 3% if both tenant and landlord are signed up for Rentalutions, and 5% if the landlord is not signed up, though the company is working to eliminate these fees.

Though the support for bitcoin payments was implemented just two weeks ago, Rentalutions processed their first rent payment with bitcoins yesterday.

Ryan Coon says that there was both an expectation and a demand from tenants for bitcoin payments support, and more importantly, he believes that digital currencies will play a role in the economy in the future. As for bitcoin optimists hoping that the digital currency will replace traditional payment methods, your time hasn’t come just yet, but when your rent is due, you now have a another option.